Russell M. Middleton - Favorite Quotes
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Favorite Quotes

Oath of the Knights of Non-Aggression

A Knight of Non-Aggression is a person* committed to fighting institutionalized aggression, who has taken the following oath:

"I swear, by my Life** and my love of It, to fight against all forms of tyranny. I recognize that the enabling idea that underlies and sustains tyranny is the idea that the socially organized and institutionalized initiation of the use of force against non-consenting and unwilling people can be justified, is desirable, and must be given sanction in order to avoid chaos***. I further recognize that no lasting liberty can be achieved until the falsehood of this idea is widely known and Pledge my Life, my Fortune, and my Sacred Honor to exposing this falsehood. To this battle I will turn my creative energy, I will give my time, and I will devote my very being, while never allowing my self, my efforts, or my cause to become the aggressor, never conceding the premise of the enemy by becoming the enemy."

*Person can mean male, female, neuter, machine, or whatever form intelligent life happens to be manifest in.

**"Life" could be: God, or some other supreme value to the individual taking the oath.

*** "Avoid chaos" could be: achieve the"public good", defeat the enemy, maintain national security, or some other version of "achieve good things/avoid bad things".

http://www.libertyroundtable.org/knao.html

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." — Sir Winston Churchill

"My only country / is six feet tall / and whether I love it or not / I'll die / for its independence." — Norman MacCaig

"I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away." — Derek Jarman

"Canada is the linchpin of the English-speaking world. Canada, with those relations of friendly, affectionate intimacy with the United States on the one hand and with her unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the Motherland on the other, is the link which joins together these great branches of the human family, a link which, spanning the oceans, brings the continents into their true relation and will prevent in future generations any growth of division between the proud and the happy nations of Europe and the great countries which have come into existence in the New World."
— Winston Churchill speech given at a luncheon in honour of Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, Mansion House, London, September 4, 1941.

"June 6, 1944 the 3rd Canadian Division landed on Juno beach. It was time to payback the Germans for the slaughter at the Dieppe raid two years earlier. At the end of D-day the Canadian forces proved that they could fight along side the Americans and British and teach the Wehrmacht a lesson.

Bagpipes played their eerie sound as the Royal Highland Regiment left the harbour in England. They played the pipes on the transports as they rocked up the shore. They bagpipes howled as the Black Watch hit Juno Beach The bagpipes gave a simple message to the Germans defending Juno beach: we are crazy, we are coming, and you are going to die."

D-DAY ON JUNO BEACH [link broken]

"We possess a terrible self-centredness, even arrogance, as a people. History is what happened to us. We dismiss as a curiosity what has gone before. The culture, values and traditions of native people amount to more than crafts and carvings. Their respect for the wisdom of their elders, their concept of family responsibilities extending beyond the nuclear family to embrace a whole village, their respect for the environment, their willingness to share - all of these values persist within their own culture even though they have been under unremitting pressure to abandon them." — Canadian Justice Thomas Berger, chairman of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, popularly known as the Berger Inquiry 1975.

The failure to perceive the importance of community has seriously wounded liberalism and undermined its core principles. So has the strong tendency to convert moral and social questions into issues of individual rights, usually constructed and then massaged by judges to place them beyond the reach of majorities and the normal democratic process.

Liberals might one day conclude that while most Americans value autonomy, they do not want a procedural republic in which patriotism, religion, socialization, and traditional values are politically declared out of bounds.

— John Leo

See also: Making Sense of America's Traitor

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." — Abraham Lincoln

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." — William Shakespeare

"In the end, the battle between conservatives and liberals is not about how robust or flaccid the state should be; it is merely a contest between two bullies brawling over how much loot goes to their favorite constituencies at the expense of everyone else." — Grant M. Nülle

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler." — Albert Einstein

"The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler." — (Einstein) Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).

"It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry." — (Einstein) Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." — (Einstein) Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).

Seven Key Leadership Ingredients

  1. Leaders know who they are and where they are going.
  2. Leaders select important problems and then mobilize followers as well as themselves to tackle, solve and overcome these priority problems.
  3. Leaders provide risk-taking entrepreneurial imagination for the organization and community.
  4. Leaders have a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
  5. Leaders are skilled mediators and negotiators and are able to stir things up and encourage healthy, desired conflict.
  6. Leaders have integrity.
  7. Leaders have brains and breadth.
— by Thomas Cronin

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." — GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON, JR. (1885 - 1945)

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

"The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission."

"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings."

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

— John F. Kennedy

"It's great to be great, but its greater to be human." — Will Rogers

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom." — Clarence Darrow

"Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est" ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands") — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)

"I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand." — Susan B. Anthony - July 1871

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." — The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)

"Where the choice is between only violence and cowardice, I would advise violence." — Mohatma Gandhi

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." — Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, An Autobiography, M. K. Gandhi, page 446.

"Nobody can hurt me without my permission." — Mohandas Gandhi

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." — Mohandas Gandhi

"Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano, an American Mafia turncoat who told Vanity Fair in 1999: 'Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always going to have a gun.'"

"A former senior police officer, Colin Greenwood, has studied this in detail and says, devastatingly: 'There is no statistical relationship between the numbers of firearms legally held in Britain and the use of firearms in homicide or robbery.'"

— Why I demand the right to carry a gun by PETER HITCHENS, Mail on Sunday, 23 March 2003

"The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth." — William J. Clinton, President, at the University of Connecticut, Oct 15 1995.

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." — Joseph Stalin (Russian prime minister. 1879-1953)

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899), Chap. 6.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." — Thomas Jefferson, 1816.

"Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years." — From "The Art Of War" by Niccolo Machiavelli 1469-1527

"All the anti-gun arguments I've seen are predicated on the belief that only the government may legitimately use deadly force to maintain public order and safety. I think this is on the face of it wrong as a philosophy and wrong in the context of the British tradition. It also explains why, given the empirical evidence that banning guns leads to increasing violent crime and victimisation of law-abiding citizens, politicians and agents of the government aren't concerned. Protection of the public isn't the point of the exercise. Control of you and your life choices is the point. Isn't it paradoxical to entrust the nation's welfare to the decisions of voters whom the law itself considers incapable of managing their own affairs?" — John Pate

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana

The protection of intellectual property thru copyright et.al. has the effect, intended or not, of holding knowledge hostage. Given that scientific research is discovering more and more knowledge about our Universe and that education is taughted as the way forward -- it is ironic that textbooks are copyrighted. [paraphrased from: Fred Swartz]

"The challenge for librarians and computer scientists is to let us find the information we want in other people's work; and the challenge for the lawyers and economists is to arrange the payment structures so that we are encouraged to use the work of others rather than re-create it." — Michael Lesk

"People without a history is like wind through the grass." — Sioux proverb

"Twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe make a rebellion" — Sir Walter Scott

"You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." — Lyndon B. Johnson

"This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him." — William Lyon Phelps

"When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all." — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

"The NRA is right...handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns." — Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center

"(Gun) prohibitionists have badly misunderstood the issue of causation. The confusion between association and causality is rampant throughout the disarmament literature." — Kopel, Gallant, & Eisen

"Violence results from basic socio-economic and cultural factors that are not altered by merely curbing availability of a particular weapon." — Don B. Kates, Jr.

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, (1911-1978) Democrat from Minnesota, quoted in "Know Your Lawmakers," Guns Magazine, February 1960, p. 4.

"In other words, after more than half a century of local, state, and federal gun control legislation, we still don't know whether these laws do what they're supposed to do. The report's most consistent finding was inconsistent findings: Sometimes gun control is associated with reduced violence, and sometimes it's associated with increased violence."

"The world is messy, and it can be difficult to control for all the relevant variables when you're trying to determine the impact of a particular law. Not surprisingly, the CDC panel calls for more and better research, and it cautions that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness."

"But it's scandalous that politicians have been legislating in the dark all these years, promising that the gun control solution du jour would save lives when there was no evidence to back up such claims. If gun control laws have any positive effect at all, it must be pretty modest to have escaped documentation so far."

Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason, October 3, 2003, © Copyright 2003 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

Re: 11 September 2001

"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve"
— Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Empire of Japan, December 7th, 1941

"An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent."

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."

— Edmund Burke, the great 18th-century Scottish philosopher and British parliamentarian

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." — Robert Louis Stevenson

SNiVeL, which has been promoted year after year by our elected representatives and by our friends in the media, has once again proven it's worth in helping to create a non-violent society.

Do The SNiVeL:

Step 1: "S" is for Safe - Assume a safe, fetal position, preferably under a table or other cover.

Step 2: "N" & "V" are for Non-Violent - Remember, remain non-violent. Moves that could be interpreted as 'self-defense' may only serve to further provoke your assailant. Offer no resistance.

Step 3: "L" is for Limp - Remain limp while begging and groveling for your life!!! This is no time for pride or courage, so cry like a girl, you fool!!! This will always serve you better than a firearm, which would only inject more violence into the situation. Finally, stay limp until your assailant has finished beating you like a rented mule. He will eventually tire from pummeling you mercilessly and choose to move on to a more entertaining endeavor, such as beating your spouse and/or children.

-- Source: http://handguncontrolinc.org/snivel.htm

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." — Sigmund Freud

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." — Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanlysis (1952)

"Pacifism in the face of terrorism is strictly an emotional response." — Kathleen Parker

"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men." — St. Augustine A.D. 354-430

"If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed." (Exodus 22:2)

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life." — Theodore Roosevelt 1858-1919

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. [See Declaration of Arbroath, 1320] In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."

— Theodore Roosevelt 1858-1919

"There is no such thing as a dangerous weapon, only dangerous people..." — Robert Heinlein

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

— Robert A. Heinlein

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." — John Stuart Mill (1806—1873), son of James Mill (1773—1836).

In Flanders Field
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

What is a Veteran?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg-or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She-or he-is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another-or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat-but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket-palsied now and aggravatingly slow-who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being-a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs. He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, the greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded. Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU."

"It is the Soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, who salutes the flag, serves under the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."

— Father Denis Edward O'Brien USMC
WWII Vet, Guadacanal and Div Chaplain 1st Marine Divison

"For those that will fight for it...FREEDOM ...has a flavor the protected shall never know."
— L/Cpl Edwin L. "Tim" Craft, B Co 3rd AT's, Khe Sanh Combat Base, Vietnam. February 1968.

"It is the Soldier, not the politician, who has given his blood, his body, his life, who has given us these FREEDOMS." — unknown

Who ARE soldiers?

QUESTION: What is the 'weapon': The weapon or the warrior?

ANSWER: The warrior. Together, they are a 'weapon system.'

Insight: The weapon is an 'improvement' only to the extent its user is willing and capable of squeezing every bit of combat effectiveness out of the weapon. This is why frequent, realistic training is important. 'More sweat in training, less blood in combat.' Fighting proficiency is quickly lost.
Origin: Peter J. Mancus, Cloud 9 Photography, 2004. (Lots of pictures, will take sometime to load.)

Scottish Soldiers

"We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." — Mother Teresa

"Loyalty above all else, except honor." — unknown

"Almost all governments - and especially dictatorial governments - are concerned foremost with their own political stability." — Kopel, Gallant, & Eisen

"He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance." — Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. " — Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"A friend is one who knows you as you are, understands where you've been, accepts who you've become and still gently invites you to grow..." — William Shakespeare 1564-1616

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW!! -- What a Ride!" — Unknown

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." — Isaac Asimov

"To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love." — Erich Fromm

"To find yourself - think for yourself." — Socrates

"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific." — Lily Tomlin

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." — Tom Clancy

"Students of 1965 lived in a world driven by deep inequalities, and enlivened by social movements committed to its elimination. Since 1965 global inequalities in income and wealth have accelerated at a phenomenally unprecedented pace. According to most estimates, wealth has concentrated more in the last 30 years than in the entire period since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. According to some estimates, the bifurcation of wealth increased more in the last 30 years than in the entire period from the Agricultural Revolution to 1965. Today Bill Gates’s personal wealth is greater than the combined wealth of the world’s poorest 450 million people. In 1965 you would have had to combine the entire Forbes 400 to get that much. (J. Paul Getty’s wealth in 1965 was only equal to that of the poorest 25 million.) Today the Forbes 400 have wealth equal to that of the poorest two billion, a third of humanity." — Craig Murphy, President, International Studies Association 2000

The following quote is over 200 years old. It was penned by Professor Alexander Tyler, a Scottish historian, who in the 18th century, wrote about the fall of the Athenian Republic over 2,000 years earlier.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

— Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747—1813) or Alexander Tyler

"Within this country (USA), this society, this culture, built upon the two legs of capitalism and democracy, there lurks a destructive virus called 'greed', which can only be held at bay by the knowledge that: 'Success equals Leadership equals RESPONSIBILITY'." — Russell M. Middleton

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." — Winston Churchill

"...only competition in the production of goods is a good thing. Competition in the production of bads is not good; in fact, it is sheer evil. Kings, coming into their position by virtue of birth, might be harmless dilettantes or decent men (and if they are "madmen," they will be quickly restrained or if need be, killed, by close relatives concerned with the possessions of the dynasty). In sharp contrast, the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it essentially impossible for a harmless or decent person to ever rise to the top. Presidents and prime ministers come into their position as a result of their efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of government." — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt" — Samual Johnson

"Some people speak from experience, while others, from experience, don't speak." — Anonymous

"God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars!" — Elbert Hubbard

"Pain makes man think. Thoughts make man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable." — John Patrick

"It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than find those who are willing to endure pain with patience." — Julius Ceasar

"Guns are not the problem. People are the problem. Weapons matter primarily when the wrong people have them and the right people don't. It is the imbalance in weapons that creates the danger." — Thomas Sowell

"In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen and they won their freedom." — Braveheart

"The man who does not feel a just pride in the honorable achievements of his ancestors will probably never accomplish anything of which his descendents may be proud." — A Crawford Family History and Genealogy

"Many of these kids just want to belong but because of a breakdown of family values, educational under-achievement and a lack of jobs, they feel excluded. So they join a gang, crew or posse which becomes their family." Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles

"...it is not enough to identify with the shared values of Europe/World/Humanity as a whole. Each individual still needs a sense of belonging to a smaller group, with whose customs and way of life they can identify." — Lisa Jardine

"It was the beauty of the stars that started their study. In seeking knowledge men lost beauty. Science forgets how in its academic ignorance that aesthetics is the beginning of all research. It is the childish impulse which always makes the great men of science."

"The sacred olive tree of Pallas Athena, the branch of peace and wisdom. Woman, only, took olives and treated them so they were eatable and woman again created the oil, and so woman the civilizer makes Mediterranean life possible. The immortal tree and symbol of hope."

"Democracy is not cutting off the heads of nobles but making the peasant noble of spirit."

— Sir Patrick Geddes (1857-1932)

More quotes I like.
From an initiative of Dr. Stephen Lunce, Professor of Information Systems, Texas A&M International University.

Another quotes page.
from the Grandfather Economic Report by Michael Hodges.

"We (the Scots) are a race of leaders. But you can't all be leaders, therefore, we tend to fight one another." — Nigel Tranter

" It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing. One of the central aims of the Programming Research Group as a teaching and research group has been to set up an atmosphere in which this separation cannot happen." — Christopher Strachey (1916-1975), Oxford University

Quotes -- page 2
(What part of 'walk humbly' don't you understand?)

Zealots are the most dangerous things on the planet. — JunkScience.com

"I haven't any question in my mind that the traditional Church is dead. It has totally outlived its philosophy. It is no longer adequate to the mind of man, to the experience of man, or to the development of our life which goes on apart from philosophy."

"My quest is to find the spirit, to find the meaning and worth of Life."

— Duncan Littlefair Ph.D.

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history." — Robert A. Heinlein

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid)."

— Robert A. Heinlein

"They (humans) believe that science, technology and culture have placed them on a different plane from the rest of the animal world. They think that all their apparatus has somehow managed to protect them against their natural impulses. That when they cover their hairless bodies with clothes, when they paint their faces with make-up, and when they wash away and disguise their personal scent, they are able to suppress the primal urges which in fact guide their every move."
— Matt Haig, The Last Family in England, Vintage 2004, p. 197.

"The natural world has an uncanny ability to hit back at the arrogance of man, and perhaps a reassessment of reality at this point is called for, rather than a reliance on oil statistics that may owe more to political maneuvering than geological facts." — AME Info - Editorial Column - Kuwait: Saturday, November 12 - 2005 at 08:46

"To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage." — James Randi

"The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will escape to the stars!" — Unkown

"Knowledge is power." — Sir Francis Bacon, (1561-1626) Philosopher, British Lord Chancellor, "Meditationes Sacrae, Of Heresies," 1597.

"But what "clearing of estates" really and properly signifies, we learn only in the promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland. There the process is distinguished by its systematic character, by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as German principalities are dealt with), finally by the peculiar form of property, under which the embezzled lands were held."

— "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx, The English edition of 1887, as edited by Frederick Engels, Volume 1, Part 8 - THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION, Ch. 27 - EXPROPRIATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION FROM THE LAND

"Education and the free dissemination of information are the ultimate and ultimately the only tools allowable for leading any democratic institution. Anyone who espouses liberty and democracy yet promotes secrecy, regulation and more laws, no matter how benevolent in appearance, is a closet tyrant and poses a greater threat to life on this planet than all the great and petty despots who have gone before. The greatest bullies of all time have been governments against their own people." — Russell M. Middleton

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." — George Washington

"In Scotland between 1900 and 1970 there were over five hundred houses of architectural worth demolished and lost forever. Despite an increase in the awareness of the problem and numerous public bodies fighting the cause, buildings are still being lost." — Scran Trust

"All that good government can do to improve the material well-being of the masses is to establish and to preserve an institutional setting in which there are no obstacles to the progressive accumulation of new capital and its utilization for the improvement of technical methods of production. The only means to increase a nation's welfare is to increase and to improve the output of products. The only means to raise wage rates permanently for all those eager to earn wages is to raise the productivity of labor by increasing the per-head quota of capital invested and improving the methods of production." — Ludwig von Mises

"It is no doubt true that the Scots (Highlander and Lowlander) have excelled in the New World. Scots are tough, individualistic and have dogged determination. Highlander and Lowlander, men and women, have come to the fore in every conceivable industry and art. Science, invention, buisness, literature and art. Scots have arguably fared better in the "New Worlds" than they might have in the old country. Yet there is a desire, a need if you prefer, for us to be able to touch the homeland again; to feel the Highland air in our lungs, to know that our ancestral home is still there and still welcomes us to see her again. The land and the Scot are bound, even after some two centuries, to each other in some way that only the Celts and Scots seem to understand. We need the Highlands in our hearts and minds -- it is already a permanent fixture in our souls."

— Robert M. Gunn

"The name and the cloak of the authority, which ye pretend, will nothing excuse you in God's presence; but rather shall ye bear double condemnation; for that ye burden God, as that his good ordinance were the cause of your iniquity. All authority which God hath established, is good and perfect, and is to be obeyed of all men, yea under the pain of damnation. But do ye not understand, that there is a great difference betwix the authority which is God's ordinance, and the persons of those which are placed in authority? The authority and God's ordinance can never do wrong; for it commandeth, That vice and wicked men be punished, and virtue, with virtuous men and just, be maintained. But the corrupt person placed in this authority may offend, and most commonly doth the contrary hereof; and is then the corruption of the person to be followed, by reason that he is clad with the name of the authority? Or, shall those that obey the wicked commandment of those that are placed in authority be excusable before God? Not so; not so. But the plagues and vengeances of God taken upon kings, their servants, and subjects, do witness to us the plain contrary."

"Pharaoh was a king, and had his authority of God, who commanded his subjects to murder and torment the Israelites, and at last most cruelly to persecute their lives. But was their obedience (blind rage it should be called) excusable before God? The universal plague doth plainly declare that the wicked commander, and those that obeyed, were alike guilty before God. And if the example of Pharaoh shall be rejected because he was [a gentile], then let us consider the facts of Saul: He was a king anointed of God, appointed to reign over his people; he commanded to persecute David, because (as he alleged) David was a traitor and usurper of the crown; and likewise commanded Abimelech the High Priest and his fellows to be slain: But did God approve any part of this obedience? Evident it is that he did not. And think ye, that God will approve in you that which he did damn in others? Be not deceived: with God there is no such partiality. If ye obey the unjust commandments of wicked rulers, ye shall suffer God's vengeance and just punishment with them. And therefore as ye tender your own salvation, we most earnestly require of you moderation, and that ye stay yourselves, and the fury of others, from persecuting of us, till our cause be tried in lawful and open judgment."

The consequences of disobeying the covenant of God was suffering the severity of God's judgment. If the persecutors of the Scottish Church refused to repent, they would suffer excommunication. Knox and his followers knew that God himself would give victory to the Church. Judgment would come on their oppressors in some way, either in the case with Ananias and Saphira being struck down immediately (Acts 5:1-11); in the case of Simon the Sorcerer in being brought to repentance (Acts 8:18-24); in the case of Herod being struck down by disease (Acts 12:23); or in the case of Elymas the Sorcerer who was incapacitated by being struck by blindness (Acts 13:8-11). Armed uprising was not the first priority of the Church. They were first to dispense with all effective means of Church discipline. But armed resistance, as a last means of self defense, was never ruled out.

— John Knox, The Reformation in Scotland, pp.168,169,171,172.

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